Matthew Alexander Henson, one of the first
two Americans to reach the North Pole. Polar
Eskimo by culture, but much darker and with
very curly hair, he bears a remarkable resem
blance to photographs of Henson I have stud
ied over the years.
After about a half hour's ride we reach
the offshore seal traps set by his son Avataq.
Anaukaq chops a hole in the ice around the
rope tied to a stake. He tugs on the rope sev
eral times to see whether a seal is attached.
"No luck," he says. We'll come back tomor
row, as Anaukaq enjoys this chore. He would
feel useless if he did not have some food
gathering responsibilities. So his five sons per
mit him to travel the bay with his grandchil
dren to check their seal traps.
Returning to the warmth of his son Ajako's
home, constructed of wood though still called
an igloo, we pull off our snowshoes and shoes.
With a pocketknife Anaukaq cuts off a raw,
bloody sliver from a large walrus slab hanging
just inside the door. "Mamartoq-verytasty,"
he says, cutting a second sliver for me. I try
to fake it. "Mamartoq," I say, but without
conviction.
In the central room Anaukaq's daughter-in
law Puto is scraping the fat from a polar bear
skin that will make pants for Nuka, who has
just killed his first nanoq. The sweet aroma
of polar bear stew permeates the house. She
hands a small piece of fat to her father-in-law
as a token of respect. "Very tasty!" he says in
thanks for the delicacy.
Anaukaq tells me that since childhood he
has heard many stories about the great Mari
paluk (Matthew the Kind One), stories that
have made him proud. Henson, he says, was
the most popular man ever to visit his land.
Polar Eskimo legends and songs tell of how
masterfully Maripaluk could drive a dogsled
or hunt and skin a puihi (seal) or kill an
aaveq (walrus). Then of course there was his
long trek north, across the great sea with
Ootah, Seegloo, Egingwah, Ooqueah, and
Peary, to that strange place at the end of the
sea ice they called the North Pole.
The Eskimos would never have traveled so
far from land in pursuit of Peary's obsession
were it not for Maripaluk's presence and
persuasion. Henson knew intimately most of
the 200 or so members of the settlement. He
spoke their language and was accepted as one
of them. Peary, the commander of the expe
ditions, could provide them with pay in the
424
form of goods and much desired hunting
rifles. But Henson was to them the man who
made the expeditions work. Even the great
Ootah said that while the others on Peary's
expeditions were like children in the ways
of the Eskimo, Maripaluk was a natural in
their world.
Once their goal was achieved, once the
"Stars and Stripes [were] nailed to North
Pole," Peary and Henson left Greenland,
never to return. But both left behind legacies
and legends. Anaukaq is part of that legacy.
Y VISIT to Moriussaq had roots
some years earlier when I was a
visiting professor at the Karo
linska Nobel Institute in Stock
holm, Sweden. When some of my Swedish
colleagues began to talk about Arctic explora
tion, I interjected proudly that a black Ameri
can had made significant contributions to
that field. To my surprise they knew all about
Matthew Henson, an unsung hero to most in
his native country. One Swede who had trav
eled to Greenland told me that some Eskimos
darker in complexion than others might be
descendants of Henson, while others lighter
in complexion might be Peary's offspring.
Many Danish men stationed in Greenland left
mixed children behind, and Henson and Peary
had spent a decade in the Arctic.
In 1986 1 was granted permission by the
government of Denmark to travel to the
northwestern reaches of Greenland to "con
duct a scientific study of ear disease in Eski
mos and to interview some of the Polar
Eskimos who were familiar with early Amer
ican explorations in the area." I was later
given special permission by the U. S. Air
Force to fly to Thule Air Base. Farther north
at Moriussaq, village elders confirmed that
the little dark man named Anaukaq was
indeed the son of Maripaluk.
Anaukaq, respected patriarch of five sons
and 24 grandchildren, told me about each of
his children and pointed with greatest pride
to the ones who had become hunters instead
of technical workers under the Danes. He en
joyed watching his granddaughters practice
the old way of preparing raw birds for burial
in a sealskin pouch, to be eaten as a delicacy
months later. But most of all, he enjoyed
talking about the legends of his father and
Peary. He and his "cousin" Kali had grown
up together learning about their fathers' lives
National Geographic, September 1988